The Abyss cracked.
Not from impact—but from presence.
Kael no longer fought with light—he was light.
The stars bowed, planets ceased their spin, and time itself hiccupped as the Celestial Core ignited within him.
Yaros faltered.
His form, once infinite, now appeared fragmented. The hole Kael had driven into his chest earlier had grown—its edges glowing with golden fire. Gods weren't supposed to rot, yet he could feel his essence unraveling.
"You… are not meant to be," Yaros hissed, voice faltering. "You are a contradiction. A divine mistake."
Kael's voice echoed like starlight striking crystal.
"No. I'm the balance your existence defied."
And with that, he moved.
The Legion parted as he ascended, his body sheathed in the burning glyphs of the First Language—the language used by the original Celestials to shape reality. It wasn't just power—it was authority over existence.
Kael raised his hand.
The stars obeyed.
Hundreds of them blinked from the galaxy's rim and aligned above his head, forming a circle—a halo of living suns.
Yaros charged, trailing galaxies like chains behind him. Shadows lashed out, twisting like vipers, trying to swallow Kael's light whole.
But they couldn't.
Not anymore.
Kael whispered a single word in the Celestial tongue—"Unbind."
Yaros screamed.
The void ripped. Not around Kael, but around Yaros. His control over the Abyss faltered as the stars within Kael's halo pulsed in response, rewriting the law of darkness.
"I am the Celestial Core," Kael declared, his voice layered with the harmonics of creation itself. "And I claim this realm."
He clenched his fist—and the Abyss fractured.
Black light spilled from the cracks as Yaros dropped to one knee. His godhood peeled from him like scorched skin, and the hole in his chest burned with purifying flame.
Still… he laughed.
"You think this ends me?" he gasped. "You are still flesh… still bound to time. I will return, Kael. If not now, then in the era after this. The dark always finds a way back."
Kael descended slowly, golden feet touching the fractured throne beneath him.
"Then I will be waiting," he said, "with the dawn."
Kael extended his hand. A final surge of celestial light cascaded from the heavens.
And Yaros was no more.
The Abyss…
collapsed.
It didn't explode or fade—it imploded, folding into itself, cleansed, sealed, and bound into the vaults beyond reality.
Kael turned.
Behind him, the Celestial Legion stood in stunned silence.
The war…
was over.
But a new age had just begun.